One of the things on our must do list for New Zealand was black water rafting, and we'd booked a trip for the Waitomo Caves. It should of taken us about two hours to get there but ended up taking nearer three thanks to a missed turning. Once we'd arrived, there was only three of us and the instructor going on the trip. Just a short drive from the office and we were at base camp near the cave, and the instructor kitted us out with some rather fetching wet suits, a helmet, harness and gum boots. Looking very cool we hopped back in the mini van for another short drive to the cave. The only way into the cave was by abseiling down a 30_m crevasse to the river below, so after some briefing on the equipment I was first up. There was a small platform that went over the drop which you had to swing out from and lower yourself down. Mel was really quite nervous but she managed it. Once we'd all got down we each got given an inner tube and the guide led us up river into the cave. In parts, the river got rather deep filling our wellies and the water was freezing! About 15 minutes in we stopped on a bank of pebbles and switched our lights off, and the whole roof of the cave was covered in glow worms! It was amazing, just like looking at the stars but in complete darkness. There were that many they gave off enough light for us to see each others white wellies. The glow worm is actually a larvae of a fly and they glow to attract other insects into their sticky strings they hang from the cave roof around them, rather like a spiders web. The glow is the bacteria in their back end that they feed oxygen to, and in turn the bacteria gives off light. They are in this lava state for around nine months, after which they turn into a chrysalis, then an adult fly. The flies only live for five days due to the fact they have no mouth and can't eat anything? Their soul purpose is to mate and lay eggs, which also glow a golden co lour, and you can see little clusters of them all over the roof. The ironic thing is that the glow worms main food source is the adult fly themselves! There is a distinct line about a meter above the water level where there are no glow worms, this is because they apparently get spotted by eels that squirt water at them to make them fall into the water, or come out the water to eat them. After a while gazing at the worms we headed a little further into the cave before it was time to raft out or rather tube out. So we sat on the inner tubes and we were off. It's called black water rafting because you turn your lights off so it's pitch black down there, and you never know if there is a rock heading your way. We floated back down the way we'd come past where we abseiled in and further down stream into another cave system. Then it was time for some caving. The guide lead us down through the cave showing us stalactites and stalagmites, some of which were well over a meter long, and seeing as they only grow one centimeter every hundred years that quite impressive. There were lots of tight nooks and crannies he made us squeeze through and we had to full on swim across the river at one point. We eventually stopped to rest on some rocks, where the guide produced a flask of hot juice and some chocolate for us, I didn't think I'd be doing that at 60_m under ground! Once we made our way back up to the opening the only way out was to climb out 30_m, another challenge Mel over came, I'm quite proud of her for doing all of what she did as it was out of her comfort zone and she can get quite claustrophobic. We went back to the office to dry off and warm up with some soup while the photos were being sorted, then we went to Countdown to buy a well earned bottle of wine. The holiday park we were staying in had a hot tub so we made full use of that.